Chronicles Potpourri – American absurdities and abnormalities

Item 1:According to U.S. News, a survey found less than 8 percent of America’s “major” universities required English majors to take a Shakespeare course. He’s a DWM (Dead White Male) and all. Given how P.C. those courses are, that’s a blessing. It also allows me to use a line of Moe Howard from one of the Three Stooges’ spoofs of Renaissance times. To such lack-Shakespeare graduates, I say, “Thou art a dumb cluck.”

Item 2: I just found out the pro-Selbstmord Hemlock Society changed its name to Compassion & Choices. The name Hemlock had a connection to another DWM, Socrates, whom few moderns know about. Besides, in Phaedo, Socrates makes a strong case against suicide – unless the Polis orders it, as it did in his case. I guess a modern equivalent might be if an ObamaCare death panels orders your extinction, you should be happy about it.

As to the new name, Compassion & Choices, who could be against compassion and choice? Especially when the government compassionately chooses to deep-six you.

Item 3: Speaking in New York, Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State and co-president, said, “Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” She mentioned not just America, but the world.

If elected, we can expect Madam Clinton will insist Prof. Dr. Garry Wills, Ph.D., (almost) S.J., be made the next pontiff. Or perhaps, like Napoleon, she will crown herself.

Item 4: If a foreign military ship invades your country, your navy is supposed to sink it, or seize it if it surrenders. The crew then is captured, or killed if it resists. Surviving crew then are imprisoned, or sent home in a prisoner exchange or amnesty. Civilians are treated well, then immediately repatriated. The ship is either sunk in battle or captured. If captured, the ship is: a) kept as your own military ship; b) sold to private owners; or c) scuttled. Why isn’t this being done with the illegals invading Italy and the rest of Europe?

Item 5: President Obama’s unconstitutional drone strikes – making himself a high-tech Zeus instead of a president bound by the Constitution – “accidentally” killed two hostages, Warren Weinstein, an American, and Italian national Giovanni Lo Porto. Zeus took “full responsibility,” meaning he didn’t take any responsibility. The Constitution lets only Congress declare war; the last time it did so was World War II.

CNN reported, “The White House also disclosed Thursday that . . . Ahmed Farouq, who was an American citizen and deputy emir of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, was also killed in the operation that killed the two innocent hostages.” It’s actually illegal for even the President to kill an American citizen, even in a foreign country, without a trial and conviction. But he’s Zeus. The home Zeus’s next drone obliterates may be your own.

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Bos BobBoston MA4/25/2015 08:49 PM

The great, if I allow myself to be so liberal and positive as if today there are plenty of great men left or alive, Fleming once remarked to the effect that God bless you if you still believe in constitution or that it is still relevant to America. It is not. In postmodernity or rather post-mortality or post-suicide America the land of zombie ruling class, however, we have a substantial portion of the population who still cherish or believe in life, country, honor, and truth, to whom Wilson referred recently as patriots. If you think you're one of them and you are still alive, and if you really believe in those simple and humble and benign ideas, then please look at these two, and observe how negative they have consistently and irrevocably been. Be not afraid, be fully negative, be as negative as you can toward the positively energetic walking dead in the land of zombies of positivity and positive fascism. Be afraid of no one but God, and believe in nobody but your self. Free yourself from the living dead aka the utterly deceptive Republican Party trap and their court jesters and the conservatives, yes conservatives without quotation mark. Any conservative full of positive energy is a sure zombie, and a sneer at the meaning of the word. Any conservative constantly attacking the other side may be a clueless, for not only it is senseless for a cancer patient to blame the cells but we are also those cancer cells. If you have never asked yourself whether or not you're a zombie or a cancer cell, how could you ever deserve the word and name conservative? But the whole thing is hardly about being conservative or not in post-mortality, it is about resurrection. If we don't in good time, others outside and hostile to America will. Then there will be death of America literally, and perhaps also to Americans physically. Ask yourself how much positive energy (cheap ploy, pornography, falsehood, cowardice) you have, then you know how much a zombie you are.

Nicholas MOSESParis, France4/26/2015 04:51 PM

"Death Panels"? Come, now Mr. Seiler, with so many legitimate critiques of the new national health care regime, why resort to quoting Sarah Palin talking points on anything under the sun? Also, while I do not support subversion of the legal process, I would like to know on what grounds a man named "Ahmed Farouq" who was "deputy emir of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent" could be considered an American citizen in any meaningful sense. (Then again, one might say the same thing of Barak Obama.) Really, with all due respect, I think you can do better.

RobertMudville4/27/2015 03:16 PM

"deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”
This is stupid tripe. There are no deep seated cultural codes left, let alone any creed concerning the supernatural, or even poetic intuition. I remember when Reagan won the first time and some misguided conservative graduate students were in good cheer, my old classics professor said he wished Jimmy Carter would have won because he always preferred the wolf in wolf skin to to the wolf dressed in shepherd's skin! One thing about the old communist converts

Nicholas MOSESParis, FRANCE4/27/2015 05:15 PM

Bos Bob, you lost me when you suggested I start comparing myself to a "cancer cell" as a prerequisite for calling myself a conservative.

Bos BobBoston MA4/27/2015 06:38 PM

Take it easy. There are exceptions, but surely I'm not one of them. I think I see many here are, say, 1% of 1% among conservatives, a form of extreme exception. In the land of zombies, having some cancer cells in my own body and skin is really not a big deal. It is hard to be alive and relatively sane on some aspects of life and not become crazy while submerged in an all embracing and deeply toxic cesspool. Also I don't believe there are conservatives left in this country, again with very few exceptions, although I don't mind others calling the multitude or their calling themselves conservatives, because there are still considerable differences between them and others who hate conservatives, sometimes not without good reason. When the whole society and culture have decided to go at civilization while becoming weaker, and to wreak havoc everywhere domestic and international, and into the future, who much difference does it make to tell the difference, or how much comfort we could draw from being a conservative?